Origins

My childhood fascination with black sand is what gives this blog its name. Instead of building castles with it, six year-old Suri would collect the stuff into little plastic buckets with a glorified ice cream scoop and refine black sand in process similar to panning for gold. The result was a titanium-iron oxide called Ilmenite - much to my father's disappointment, that is the last time I cared about anything remotely related to chemistry.

I'm studying Journalism in New York and have made a hobby out of photography (with my super sexy 12M Canon Rebel xSi). The fusion of the two is what you'll find here, with the odd rant.